The Smashed Printing Plate of Frederick Douglass
The Moat The opening challenge was fairly interesting, at least, as it was two-step but consistent for both players: one at a time, the players on each team had to swing on a rope to reach a suspended net, climb over the net and then wade to the other side of the Moat. However, even though the challenge itself sounded interesting, the players were far from the best, so it wasn't as fun to watch— the Silver Snakes, the first team to lock in, took 51 seconds to hit their gong. They were closely followed by the Purple Parrots; a full minute into the round, the Red Jaguars also rang in. The Blue Barracudas finally closed off the round after one minute and fifteen seconds. The Steps of Knowledge One of the greatest crusaders for human rights was the African-American Frederick Douglass. He worked to outlaw slavery, and when the Civil War broke out, he encouraged blacks to fight in the Union Army. In 1847, Douglass founded a New York paper called The North Star; legend has it that one evening, a group of men burst into the office. "We gotta see the editor! It's a matter of life and death!" "Yeah! Hears!" "I AM the editor." "We dun lahke what yew bin printin'... like equal rahghts fer ALL men." "If you don't think all men are created equal, take it up with the guys that wrote the Declaration of Independence." "We didn't come here for a history lesson! We're here to trash this place!" They moved menacingly towards one of the printing presses, but Douglass beat them to it: "You can smash this place and I'll open the paper elsewhere. Stop me and others will take my place. You came here to destroy my paper? Let me help you!" Douglass smashed the printing press himself. "You can smash machines, but you can't smash ideas." Ashamed, the men filtered out. Douglass wiped his brow and picked up a fragment of the press, which he kept for years, until it ultimately made its way to the Temple. The Temple Games Newspaper Delivery (Galloping Machine) The first game featured the third-season horse machine, which galloped instead of spinning like the machine one year prior. However, it also pitted the boys against each other in a race to try "delivering" as many newspapers (throwing them in the designated team bin) as possible while staying on the horse. Gary fell several more times than did Jason, but this gave Jason the opportunity to throw additional newspapers— although not explicitly stated, it was probably a rule that one player had to wait until the opponent was back on the horse before throwing again. The two Jason managed to get in the bin while Gary was off the horse actually let the Red Jaguars win the first half-Pendant, with a score of 8-7 in the game. Inkwells (Cubbyhole Web) The second game was a race between Dana and Sharon to collect the most full inkwells for the newspaper within 60 seconds— some of the cubbyholes along the edges of the net contained empty inkwells instead, to slow players down. Dana's strategy of jumping down as soon as she found a full inkwell worked nicely for her; Sharon followed suit quickly, but what cost her the chance at taking the lead was missing the bin when she tried to throw one of the inkwells in; she stalled for a few seconds while Dana took the lead and eventually won 5-4, completing the first Pendant of Life for her team. Underground Railroad (Sinking Steps) The third Temple Game talked about the Underground Railroad, of which Frederick Douglass was a prominent supporter. In retrospect, oddly enough, the equipment for the second Temple Game wasn't used for this instead, considering it was used to represent the Underground Railroad in Episode 44, "The Walking Stick of Harriet Tubman". Instead, the game with the sinking steps was used, and a platform that sank was supposed to represent a player getting caught while trying to escape. With fourteen seconds on the clock, Dana made it to the other side, but whether or not she played fair is up for debate— the Jaguars tried skipping the first step at least once during the game without Kirk catching them, but when she took her first step on the attempt that got her to the other side, the camera cut away before we could actually see where she landed. Nevertheless, Kirk awarded the Red Jaguars the full Pendant of Life because they were the first to get a player across, and as a result, they shut out the Purple Parrots with a score of 2 Pendants-0. The Temple Run The Temple Run was not only frustrating, but actually a little painful to watch as well. Jason was not the fastest player, and he definitely wasn't the smartest, but it didn't help that during the entire run, Dana was constantly yelling at him to move faster, keep going forward, etc. He started by going through the Ledges, then took the upper crawl tube into the Pit of the Pendulum. He failed to make it back to the platform and had to climb the wall into the Chamber of the Sacred Markers, where he actually didn't take very long to complete the objective. However, he stalled excessively in the Room of the Ancient Warriors because he was trying to avoid the armor which he knew had a Temple Guard hiding behind it. When trying the other two suits of armor failed to open any doors, he tried going back into the Chamber to find another way until Dana screamed at him to keep going forward. Besides that delay, other difficult and stupid decisions cost the team even more time, as Jason went into the Room of the Secret Password after putting the monkey together (instead of down into the Dark Forest, which did open), and tried climbing the ladder up from the Quicksand Bog instead of bashing through the wall at first. He delayed his capture by a Temple Spirit for a few seconds as well, and eventually got caught with only thirty seconds to go. Even though Dana spent a full 150 seconds screaming at her partner to keep going, she didn't pull her weight. She wouldn't make it to the Dark Forest in that amount of time, but she should've made it much further than she did— she went too far down in the Ledges, took the lower crawl tube to the Pit (instead of the upper one, which Jason used) and ran out of time just as she started to pull herself up onto the ledge to get to the Chamber door. No victories were ever achieved when the artifact was located in the bottom room of the central shaft, and it's usually because players acted like the ones in this Temple Run. Terrible. Watch Trivia *When Olmec told everybody where the smashed printing plate was, he incorrectly called that room The Tomb of the Ancient Kings. *This was the first Red Jaguar Run of season three as well as the first time an Artifact was hidden in The Tomb of The Headless Kings. *This episode was one of the few episodes in season three that the contestants did not enter The Crypt at any point during the run. *Jason did not shout out the password when he was The Room of the Secret Password. *This was the last time that the Red Jaguars failed to make it to the Artifact in time as well as the only artifact hidden in the Tomb of the Headless Kings that was not reached. *This is the only Season 3 episode where both the Red Jaguars and the Purple Parrots advance to the Temple Games. Category:Season 3 Category:Team Run Category:Red Jaguars Category:Loss Category:Ran out of time Category:Artifacts Hidden in the Bottom of the Shaft Category:2 Pendants Category:Layout XV